WowwowWOW trimester number three! Part of me feels like I’ve been pregnant for literally EVER but part of me can’t believe 38 weeks went by so quickly! (Spoiler alert: I had the baby! And am writing this after the fact! But I took a few notes along the way to help remember what I was feeling and what was great/went wrong/was surprising.)

Compared to trimesters one and two, three definitely felt the most “I am pregnant!” There were myriad to do list items to accomplish to prep for Baby Beep’s arrival, I could exclusively only wear maternity clothes (except for a couple of dresses that I was very impressed by: highly recommend Amazon’s Lark & Ro line!), and I started my maternity leave at work. There were lots of memorable moments in these few months, too:

• I had two (more!) showers: an LA shower — it was “beep”-themed! with the greatest koozie favors and such a blast having all of our LA friends celebrating the upcoming arrival. And one in New Hampshire, where I’m originally from. It was the last plane travel for me before Beep’s arrival (at 30 weeks! not super comfy…). My brother made the syrup favors (amazing!!) and we celebrated with my east coast family as well as friends from Boston and New York. And while we were there my sister-in-law had her twins! It was definitely hard to be away for their birth, but we made sure to see them asap when we returned.
• I turned 30. No big night out to celebrate because mostly all I wanted to do was nap, but I had a few lovely dinners the week of my birthday as well as a lunch picnic in the park with lots of friends.
• My husband and I went on as many date nights as possible! We visited our favorite restaurants, explored a few new ones, went to the movies, and generally made sure to spend as much quality time together as we could squeeze in, relishing the just-the-two-of-us moments while they still existed.
• My Amazon baby registry welcome box arrived, as well as so many gifts for Baby Beep. I definitely feel over-prepped for his arrival!
• We attended a few different birth classes: two “first few weeks” preparation classes, a birthing class weekend intensive, and one focused on breastfeeding. It was great to speak with so many professionals on different aspects of the last few weeks of pregnancy, the birth process, and our first experiences with a baby. Definitely helped me and my husband feel a bit more ready…
• Nesting and readying the nursery! Our guest room became the nursery but in order to do that I had quite a bit of work just to clear it out (donated our guest bed, cleared out everything we were storing in the room and its closet) only to then fill it back up with all our lovely shower gifts! Beyond that there was a lot of sorting and organizing that happened both in the nursery and other parts of our house (loving this unit for laundry room storage and this sideboard table in our dining room — we put hundreds of my husband’s father’s record collection on the bottom shelf that had previously been taking up lots of guest room space). For the nursery we got our crib from IKEA and our dresser and glider off OfferUp. Things in that room finally started to feel put together around week 36!

Annnnd then there were some not so memorable moments. Work was truly tiring for me throughout the first few months of 2019 and definitely one of the most stressful periods of time I’ve ever experienced in my career. That didn’t feel super great, especially pulling some late nights and lots of weekend work, when all I really wanted to do was focus on nesting, prepping for Beep’s arrival, and getting in as much sleep as possible.

Luckily California offers 4 weeks pre-due date of pregnancy disability leave that I was definitely taking. It can even extend to up to 6 weeks if you go past your due date which I was a little bit hoping for, for the added time off/time to prep/etc. But I ended up only getting about two and a half weeks, as Baby Beep arrived 10 days early! I spent the time cleaning and organizing the house, doing a fair amount of yard work we’d put off in the spring, and taking our dog, Melba, for as many long walks as I could!

Baby is the size of a…

Baby Beep started out the trimester at the size of broccoli and finished up as a mini watermelon! I happened to go grocery shopping the day I switched over to watermelon status and the store had a display at the front door of a big ‘ol pile of melons… perfect photo opportunity.

How I’m feeling:

I feel like I probably jinxed myself for extolling how great the second trimester was and how much energy I finally had back. The third was definitely a practice in not quite feeling like myself and learning what a changing body means as far as endurance, balance, and flexibility go. I’ve continued taking yoga classes but not quite as frequent and at a slower pace/with more modifications. It still feels good to go and move and be in a place I know well and love, but I definitely took it much slower and gentler as the weeks went by.

I did finally start really looking pregnant in the third trimester, and with that came being treated like a pregnant person… which, it turns out, I don’t love being treated that way. There were so many “you shouldn’t hold [that heavy thing]” and “I can do that, you can’t” admonishments; it definitely bugged me, but I tried to swallow a lot of my backlash and find the parts to be thankful for (i.e. I guess I won’t lift this shoebox, sure you can carry my one bag of groceries to the car, etc).

What I’m eating:

Eating struggles did not come by way of cravings or aversions in this trimester, but instead just on quantity. There’s so much baby in there that I definitely lost some stomach room. I used to pride myself on being able to sock away big meals, but after weeks 31 or 32, I’ve found I just don’t have the room to eat as much as I might want. I’ve gotten really good at the leftovers game and snacking between meals to keep my calorie intake at the right level, but it’s a new routine I’ve had to get used to. Luckily everything sounds good and I’ve been trying hard to focus on healthy eating as I know little Beep is growing more and more as we near the end!

What I’m doing:

Like I said, yoga was still in my routine for the trimester, but at a more relaxed pace and definitely with lots of modifications thrown in (I actually really loved being able to skip any ab exercises and grab some free weights to keep my arms a bit sculpted!). I tried to up my walking as much as possible as I’d heard that helps for labor prep, and managed to squeeze a few hikes in as well.

Not quite in the “workout” camp, but definitely in the “doing” category: I put a lot of time and effort into the nursery in these last few weeks. I stripped, sanded, and refinished a changing table dresser that we found on OfferUp, put together our crib, and did SO much unpacking and organizing/putting away of gifts, clothes, books, etc.

What I’m reading:

Definitely slacked a little on the book front this trimester. I finished one book: ‘The Happy Sleeper,’ got through a considerable chunk of ‘Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn,’ and added a slew of others to my “to read” list: ‘Simplicity Parenting,’ ‘Cribsheet,’ ‘Bringing Up Bébé,’ and ‘Work. Pump. Repeat.‘

What I’m wearing:

Dresses were the name of the game for me in the last trimester. The ease of not having to think about more than one piece of clothing for an outfit coupled with the comfort when my pants and shirts definitely tightened up considerably over the last weeks meant I lived in them. Favorites from Old Navy: striped short sleeve, black long sleeve, flower flutter sleeve; and this one from Amazon: short sleeve jersey flare dress. For work I continued to wear these cropped pants and these jeans from Old Navy with a few different striped tees from Motherhood ([1], [2], [3], [4]) that I got off Poshmark and cycled through so much that I never want to wear stripes again (…probably a lie, but I’m definitely off stripes for the foreseeable future). I also made my own jorts from a pair of pregnancy jeans I was handed down, and, because we had some warmer weather, those were pretty much the only thing I wore at home for the last two weeks of being pregnant!

How I’m sleeping:

Not great ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I’m waking up at least once a night, and usually twice, to pee. And there are no comfortable positions left. I’m using a rolled up yoga towel to support my stomach, and myriad pillows to try to prop myself into anything that feels agreeable, but it’s a nightly battle.

What I’m wondering!

How is this all going to end?! Definitely lots of nervous feelings happening towards the end of this trimester, and lots of questions surrounding the “when” of it all. I’m a big Type-A planner and all I want to do is be able to schedule my life… but that’s very hard to do when your window for when something could happen spans five weeks!

Unsurprisingly, I’m also still wondering what we will name this kid! I mentioned this in my second trimester recap, but we have made little to no progress since then on names. We have a list of potential frontrunners… but every now and then I decide I hate all of them, too! We shall see…

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Do we have any pregnant readers? Anyone a new mama? Who has book recommendations?? Let me know in the comments!